Rahway High School Robotics Team wins two trophies, makes it to semi-finals

Ryan Silva (left) and Justin Martin, members of Rahwayâs Robo-Tribe Team 1228, display the Excellence in Engineering prize that the team won in the Mount Olive competition.

Robo-Tribe Team 1228, the robotics team from Rahway High School participates in the FIRST competitions each spring.

FIRST, an acronym for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,” is a national program that promotes youth interest in science and technology.

Dean Kamen, entrepreneur and inventor of the Segway human transporter and insulin-pump technology, founded the program in 1989.

Recently, the Rahway High School competed twice, first at Mount Olive High School and then at Clifton High School.

At Mount Olive, Team 1228 won its second Excellence in Engineering award in a row. This award, sponsored by Delphi celebrates an elegant and advantageous machine feature. The team that wins this award must be able to describe as well as demonstrate the chosen machine feature.

Although they had plenty of pressure and juice in their battery, this team discovered that they could not follow the straight and narrow path to score.

Although their machine would start to head in the correct direction, it would soon begin to wander. So, team members came up a simple solution, by measuring the distance each side of their machine moved. They knew that they were dealing with more than a simple arcade game following a dotted line.

In addition, they placed second at the FIRST Robotics Competition Mid-Atlantic Robotics District Qualifier Competition at Clifton High School.

The event took place on March 15 and 16. Team 1228 was ranked second out of 31 teams with a record of 10-2-0. They were able to make 2 balls in autonomous and for the first time in 11 years, made it past quarter-finals into the semi-finals.

They also won the Innovation in Control Award for their 3D printed parts sponsored by Rockwell Automation. This award celebrates a team’s innovative control system and application of control components.

Rahway High School is a culturally diverse, comprehensive high school where excellence is expected, achieved, and celebrated in the classroom, on the field, and in the arts and sciences, and community service is encouraged.